Unilever to Prevent Click Fraud With New Ad Manifesto

Unilever, one of the world's largest advertising agencies, has vowed to begin a campaign against click fraud and other malicious business practices.

Unilever, the world’s second-largest advertiser, wants to help clean up the digital marketing landscape by eliminating click fraud. According to reports, the company will be imposing stricter policies for its publishers to help boost consumer trust and strengthen its ad campaigns online.

The company believes that gathering global, local, and regional digital publishers under a Trusted Publishers network will aid in the monitoring of its advertisements.

“Online advertising credibility is still a global, industry-wide problem and as the world’s second largest advertiser, we have a responsibility to use our scale and influence to address the issue.

We want to know that real people, not robots, are enjoying our ads – bots don’t eat a lot of Ben & Jerry’s. We will champion the good actors that help us in this while diminishing the roles of the bad.”

Fighting Click Fraud

According to estimates, click fraud generates over $20 million USD in profit every month. Meanwhile, other studies suggest that 90 percent of ad campaign clicks come from bots.

Unilever’s effort is part of a more comprehensive initiative called UNext that tackles all challenges currently faced by the digital marketing industry. Aside from Unilever, other world-renowned advertisers including Diageo, Samsung, P&G, American Express, GSK, L’Oreal, Mars, and Dow Jones also support the mission.

For Unilever, all publishers who want to join the company’s Trusted Publishers network will be filtered based on viewability, verification, and value standards. They also have to go through stringent checks regarding ad fraud, online brand safety, traffic quality, and other account-related standards.

Unilever’s current move comes just over a year after the advertiser warned Facebook and Google that it would be withdrawing its investments unless the two Internet companies do something about their behavior and address significant issues like fake news and spam content.

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Rechelle Ann Fuertes

Rechelle is the current Managing Editor of Edgy. She's an experienced SEO content writer, researcher, social media manager, and visual artist. She enjoys traveling and spending time anywhere near the sea with her family and friends.